Designing Products that Scale.
Designing Products that Scale.
Design leader with 11+ years building design functions inside product organisations. I have led design teams, owned design system governance across distributed multi-squad orgs, and built the QA and documentation practice across product squads. My work sits mostly in regulated and infrastructure-constrained environments, such as M-PESA, where I designed statement verification for over 50 million users.
For the past year I have run my own studio, advising leadership teams on raising design maturity and building AI-native products hands-on. I am now looking to lead design inside one product organisation rather than across many.
Design leader with 11+ years building design functions inside product organisations. I have led design teams, owned design system governance across distributed multi-squad orgs, and built the QA and documentation practice across product squads. My work sits mostly in regulated and infrastructure-constrained environments, such as M-PESA, where I designed statement verification for over 50 million users.
For the past year I have run my own studio, advising leadership teams on raising design maturity and building AI-native products hands-on. I am now looking to lead design inside one product organisation rather than across many.
Experience
Suluhu Studio · Founder and Design Lead · Present
Built and run the studio end to end: team structure, decision frameworks, partner operating agreements, and delivery rhythms, all set from zero.
Advise client leadership on raising design maturity using the Design Maturity Matrix, a diagnostic I built and run with organisations across Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.
Set and hold the quality bar across parallel client engagements with a small team, making prioritisation and resourcing calls with full accountability for outcomes.
Designed and shipped Kauli, an AI diagnostic product, end to end as sole designer and builder: interaction model, Claude API backend, deployment on Railway, Supabase, and Vercel.
Built Daro, a cohort programme for founders, designed as a product with behavioural change as the success measure rather than completion or satisfaction.
KOKO Networks · Senior Product Designer, Platform and CX · 2023 to 2026
Led a team of four junior and mid-weight designers across the platform and CX squads.
Introduced Design QA and documentation systems across four product squads, cutting design-to-development rework by approximately 30% and setting the standards the squads adhered to.
Owned UX across the full customer lifecycle, from acquisition and activation through PAYG, support, and loyalty, for a clean cooking platform serving over 1 million households in Kenya.
Designed against $50 to $80 Android devices as a hard constraint: low RAM, intermittent connectivity, and users moving over from feature phones.
Conducted behavioral and field research activities and turned in-home observation into product architecture decisions rather than interface refinements.
Safaricom PLC · Senior Product Designer · 2021 to 2023
Owned design system governance across a distributed, multi-team product organisation, holding consistency and quality across squads that shipped independently.
Designed digital statement verification for M-PESA’s 50M+ users, replacing in-branch verification with a self-serve flow that cut related support tickets by 40% and removed tens of thousands of daily service-centre visits.
Made the case for inclusion as a delivery requirement rather than an enhancement, including a USSD fallback so feature-phone users kept access inside a regulated financial product.
Ran A/B testing cadences on core flows and used the results to settle design disagreements with evidence rather than seniority.
YLabs · Senior Product Designer · 2020 to 2021
Co-designed and launched Bohoka, a mobile-first mental health and peer support platform for young people in Rwanda, adopted by thousands across underserved regions.
Ran co-design workshops and in-person behavioural testing in low-connectivity, low-literacy settings, where the constraint was low familiarity with digital products.
Designed navigation that needed no onboarding tutorial, and engagement loops for return usage in communities with no prior digital habit structure.
Kwara · UX/UI Designer · 2020
Redesigned SACCO digital banking onboarding and Bulk SMS capabilities for cooperative members with low prior digital banking exposure; onboarding conversion and member engagement improved post-launch.
Ajua Inc. · Product Design Lead · 2019 to 2020
Led design across Nairobi and Lagos teams reporting into US-based leadership.
Built Ajua’s first design system and structured handoff documentation, cutting design-to-development delivery time and raising engineering execution quality.
Led UX and product design for a customer-experience intelligence platform launched with MTN Nigeria.
Jumia Group · Product Designer · 2017 to 2019
Shipped e-commerce interfaces across multiple African markets and introduced A/B testing to core conversion funnels.
Suluhu Studio · Founder and Design Lead · Present
Built and run the studio end to end: team structure, decision frameworks, partner operating agreements, and delivery rhythms, all set from zero.
Advise client leadership on raising design maturity using the Design Maturity Matrix, a diagnostic I built and run with organisations across Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.
Set and hold the quality bar across parallel client engagements with a small team, making prioritisation and resourcing calls with full accountability for outcomes.
Designed and shipped Kauli, an AI diagnostic product, end to end as sole designer and builder: interaction model, Claude API backend, deployment on Railway, Supabase, and Vercel.
Built Daro, a cohort programme for founders, designed as a product with behavioural change as the success measure rather than completion or satisfaction.
KOKO Networks · Senior Product Designer, Platform and CX · 2023 to 2026
Led a team of four junior and mid-weight designers across the platform and CX squads.
Introduced Design QA and documentation systems across four product squads, cutting design-to-development rework by approximately 30% and setting the standards the squads adhered to.
Owned UX across the full customer lifecycle, from acquisition and activation through PAYG, support, and loyalty, for a clean cooking platform serving over 1 million households in Kenya.
Designed against $50 to $80 Android devices as a hard constraint: low RAM, intermittent connectivity, and users moving over from feature phones.
Conducted behavioral and field research activities and turned in-home observation into product architecture decisions rather than interface refinements.
Safaricom PLC · Senior Product Designer · 2021 to 2023
Owned design system governance across a distributed, multi-team product organisation, holding consistency and quality across squads that shipped independently.
Designed digital statement verification for M-PESA’s 50M+ users, replacing in-branch verification with a self-serve flow that cut related support tickets by 40% and removed tens of thousands of daily service-centre visits.
Made the case for inclusion as a delivery requirement rather than an enhancement, including a USSD fallback so feature-phone users kept access inside a regulated financial product.
Ran A/B testing cadences on core flows and used the results to settle design disagreements with evidence rather than seniority.
YLabs · Senior Product Designer · 2020 to 2021
Co-designed and launched Bohoka, a mobile-first mental health and peer support platform for young people in Rwanda, adopted by thousands across underserved regions.
Ran co-design workshops and in-person behavioural testing in low-connectivity, low-literacy settings, where the constraint was low familiarity with digital products.
Designed navigation that needed no onboarding tutorial, and engagement loops for return usage in communities with no prior digital habit structure.
Kwara · UX/UI Designer · 2020
Redesigned SACCO digital banking onboarding and Bulk SMS capabilities for cooperative members with low prior digital banking exposure; onboarding conversion and member engagement improved post-launch.
Ajua Inc. · Product Design Lead · 2019 to 2020
Led design across Nairobi and Lagos teams reporting into US-based leadership.
Built Ajua’s first design system and structured handoff documentation, cutting design-to-development delivery time and raising engineering execution quality.
Led UX and product design for a customer-experience intelligence platform launched with MTN Nigeria.
Jumia Group · Product Designer · 2017 to 2019
Shipped e-commerce interfaces across multiple African markets and introduced A/B testing to core conversion funnels.
Education
World Bank Group — Behavioral Science in Public Policy (2026)
University of Sydney — Design Thinking for Business Strategy (2021)
UX Research at Scale — University of Michigan (2020)
Marketing Analytics — University of Virginia, Darden School of Business (2019)
Music Technology Academy — Audio Production & Broadcast Journalism (2015)
eMobilis Institute — Java & Android Development (2014)
Skills
Leadership: Design team management and mentorship, hiring input, design maturity assessment, DesignOps, design QA, critique facilitation, cross-functional and cross-timezone leadership.
Systems: Design systems creation and governance, documentation standards, component and pattern libraries, handoff practice.
Design: Product design, information architecture, interaction design, mobile-first and low-bandwidth UX, inclusive and accessible design, prototyping.
Research: Behavioral field research, co-design workshops, in-person observation, usability testing, interview design.
Data: A/B testing, conversion funnel analysis, basic SQL.
AI and prototyping: Claude API, Claude Code, Cursor, Replit, Bolt. Hands-on AI product building, used daily to prototype and ship.
Tools: Figma, Framer, Supabase, Vercel, Airtable, Jira, Miro, Cursor.
Proficient in Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, and Framer.
Strong understanding of user-centered design principles.
Ability to conduct comprehensive user research and usability testing.
Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail.
Personal qualities
Strategic thinker who translates design craft into measurable business results.
Collaborative leader, equally comfortable mentoring teams and working hands-on.
Experienced in building design maturity within fast-growing organizations.
Interests
Design systems and how they hold up at scale in fast-growing organizations.Building for constraint, low bandwidth, feature phones, small teams, rather than designing around it.Using AI tools hands-on, not just to accelerate design work, but to build and ship product myself.
Let’s Work…
I've designed for users at national scale, built design systems that hold quality across distributed teams, and led design teams. Based in Nairobi, designing for humans across the globe.
Let’s Work…
I've designed for users at national scale, built design systems that hold quality across distributed teams, and led design teams. Based in Nairobi, designing for humans across the globe.
Let’s Work…
I've designed for users at national scale, built design systems that hold quality across distributed teams, and led design teams. Based in Nairobi, designing for humans across the globe.